The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson eBook

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  But at night I would wander away, away,
  I would fling on each side my low-flowing locks,
  And lightly vault from the throne and play
  With the mermen in and out of the rocks;
  We would run to and fro, and hide and seek,
  On the broad sea-wolds in the [1] crimson shells,
  Whose silvery spikes are nighest the sea. 
  But if any came near I would call, and shriek,
  And adown the steep like a wave I would leap
  From the diamond-ledges that jut from the dells;
  For I would not be kiss’d [2] by all who would list,
  Of the bold merry mermen under the sea;
  They would sue me, and woo me, and flatter me,
  In the purple twilights under the sea;
  But the king of them all would carry me,
  Woo me, and win me, and marry me,
  In the branching jaspers under the sea;
  Then all the dry pied things that be
  In the hueless mosses under the sea
  Would curl round my silver feet silently,
  All looking up for the love of me. 
  And if I should carol aloud, from aloft
  All things that are forked, and horned, and soft
  Would lean out from the hollow sphere of the sea,
  All looking down for the love of me.

[Footnote 1:  Till 1857.  The.]

[Footnote 2:  Till 1857.  The.]

[Footnote 3:  1830.  ’I the.  So till 1853.]

[Footnote 4:  1830 Kist.]

SONNET TO J. M. K.

First printed in 1830, not in 1833.

This sonnet was addressed to John Mitchell Kemble, the well-known Editor of the ‘Beowulf’ and other Anglo-Saxon poems.  He intended to go into the Church, but was never ordained, and devoted his life to early English studies.  See memoir of him in ‘Dict, of Nat.  Biography’.

  My hope and heart is with thee—­thou wilt be
  A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest
  To scare church-harpies from the master’s feast;
  Our dusted velvets have much need of thee: 
  Thou art no Sabbath-drawler of old saws,
  Distill’d from some worm-canker’d homily;
  But spurr’d at heart with fieriest energy
  To embattail and to wall about thy cause
  With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
  The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
  Half God’s good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
  Brow-beats his desk below.  Thou from a throne
  Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark
  Arrows of lightnings.  I will stand and mark.

THE LADY OF SHALOTT

First published in 1833.

This poem was composed in its first form as early as May, 1832 or 1833, as we learn from Fitzgerald’s note—­of the exact year he was not certain (’Life of Tennyson’, i., 147).  The evolution of the poem is an interesting study.  How greatly it was altered in the second edition of 1842 will be evident from the collation which follows.  The text of 1842 became the permanent text, and in